


Unraveling

by literati42



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Baggage, Gen, Iron-Dad, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 21:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14481528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literati42/pseuds/literati42
Summary: INFINITY WAR SPOILERS DO NOT KEEP READING UNLESS YOU'VE SEEN IT!-Two months have passed since the events of Infinity War and Tony is stuck, unable to move on





	Unraveling

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this at 1 in the morning after seeing the movie opening night so it's all pretty fresh (the pain is real).

Tony sat on the edge of his bed two months after half the earth’s population faded into ash and stared into the eyes of Peter Parker. The kid was in his homemade suit perched in a chair with his knees pulled up and spindly arms hugging them loosely. He tilted his head slightly to the side. Tony stood and walked into the kitchen, dragging a bottle of Scotch over and sloshing the brown liquid into a tumbler. He saw the kid come up out of the corner of his eye. “You just going to keep staring at me like that?”  
“What would you have wanted me to say?” Peter asked.  
The alcohol could not be strong enough, but he poured another and stared out the windows of the new Avenger’s compound. The rooms behind him held the weight of emptiness. It was a ghost town inside the labs.  
A ghost town made sense if he was going to be haunted.  
He looked at Peter as the boy came up and put his fingers to the window. “Everything’s on fire.”  
“Not everything, just things,” Tony replied. They could not hear the sirens from up here, but they were wailing. Even after two months, the world had not adjusted to having fifty percent less of its first responders.  
“We’re one step from the end of that old movie, Terminator. With the fires and the…” The older Avenger turned to face him fully.  
“Why did you stop?”  
“Usually you interrupt me there,” Peter said. Tony acknowledged this with a grunt and the slight lift of his glass. He walked to the long table and sat at the head of it, staring at the row of empty chairs on either side.  
“When I made Ultron I was thinking of safety, yes. I was thinking of seeing my friends die. Who protects the protectors, and all that,” he rolled his fingers at the statement. “But it was also legacy. Me and Banner…a part of us would last on. We see how that turned out.” Peter walked around the table and took the seat at his right hand. He was quiet. Peter was never this quiet in life. “Then there was you. It was different with you, Kid. I met you, and I wanted you to join us here. You made me want to be there for Vision, to have a kid with Pepper. Family. I started to believe I could create that here, with you.” His laugh was cold, and he tipped back the tumbler, letting its liquid worm its way down his throat. “I invited you to come, to be a part of this.” He lifted the glass to Peter. “You turned me down.”  
“Would it have made a difference?”  
Tony leaned forward on his elbows, “That’s just it, Peter. None of it made a difference. If I never asked you to be an Avenger to stop Cap, or if you said yes to me and joined the compound to get better trained, or if you stayed clear of everything with Thanos. None of it would make one bit of difference, because,” he swirled the Scotch in the glass, “At the end of the day it was a lottery, and your number got pulled. That would have happened if you were just plain Peter Parker with no powers. That would have happened if we never met or if we spent every moment training you. That would have happened even if I made you a better suit or sent you to hide in the furthest reaches of space. It was random, so none of it mattered.” He stood up, the chair scraping the floor behind him. He could not sit still. Stillness was worse.  
Peter followed him down into the central lab, and Tony sat on the floor, his back to the window and the world beyond it.  
“What do you want me to say, Mr. Stark?”  
“What you would have said.” He sloshed his drink as he gestured. “I want you to say what you would have said, Peter, but you can’t. It’s all wrong.”  
“Mr. Stark,” Peter kneeled, his eyes full of worry. “It’s okay, Mr. Stark. I’m here.”  
Tony shook his head, “No. That’s what I want you to say. That’s not what you would have said.” He pushed his hand into Peter’s shoulder, watching his fingers slip through and the image of unmasked webslinger dissipate around him, feeling nothing. “F.R.I.D.A.Y, deactivate hologram functions.” Peter vanished, just like before. “The program is still not right. You need to recalibrate it. It still doesn’t sound like him.”  
“Sir, Pepper Potts is calling. Should I answer…”  
“No.”  
“Maybe we should not keep doing this, sir.”  
“Recalibrate the simulation, F.R.I.D.A.Y.”  
“Yes, sir.”  
Tony leaned his head back against the glass and closed his eyes.  
“I’m disappointed in you, Mr. Stark.”  
Tony’s eyes sprang open, and Peter was there, no longer wearing the old Spidey suit, but in the torn and signed one from Titan. From where it all ended.  
“What?”  
Peter’s eyes were wild with fury like the day he yelled at him after the harbor ship split in half. He waved toward the window. “4 billion people are gone from this world alone. Everything is in ruins, and your friends are out there trying to fix it. And you? You what? You’re sitting here alone feeling sorry for yourself.” Tony shot up to his feet, eyes flashing.  
“You don’t get to judge me, Kid.”  
“You could be doing something. Or did you forget I’m not the only ‘kid’ you had?”  
“Who…?” Tony frowned, “Vision? Well, since you missed it, Kid. He’s dead too.”  
“And weren’t you the one who gave him life to begin with?”  
“What would be the point? You don’t get it. It’s all random. Sure, it’s easy for you to be self-righteous. You haven’t lived. You haven’t seen the things I’ve seen.”  
“Yes. And now I’ll never get to,” Peter replied. “I’d be out there, but I can’t.”  
“Yeah. Lucky you. You’re gone and I’m still here. I got left here alone.” Tears blurred the edges of his vision. “F.R.I.D.A.Y. Disengage hologram.” He continued to stare into Peter’s furious eyes. “Disengage hologram!”  
“She can’t,” Peter said, walking to the door, casting one last phrase behind him as he left, “I’m not a hologram.” The door shut. It was as if Tony felt the world shift. His eyes widened.  
“Peter!”  
Tony stumbled, not remembering when he got on the ground again. He stumbled to the door and flung it open, but the hall was empty. The motion sensing lights lay dead.  
“F.R.I.D.A.Y, where’s Peter?”  
“I have not finished recalibrating the simulation.”  
“No. The real Peter.”  
It was odd, hearing hesitancy in an AI’s voice. “Peter Parker is dead, sir.”  
“He was just here!”  
“You fell asleep…”  
Tony looked back to the room, he saw an overturned tumbler, its dark liquid staining the floor by the window. He had it in his hand and then it dropped when he… “He was a dream?”  
“I can have the hologram simulation running again in five minutes.”  
“No.” Tony walked over. He righted the glass but did not refill it, and this time he looked out the window. For a moment he thought, had been so sure, it was real. He leaned his forehead against the glass. “This is not how your story ends, Peter.”  
Tony Stark, Iron Man, stood up. “F.R.I.D.A.Y, set up a flight to Wakanda.”  
“Sir?”  
He needed to go where it happened. He needed to see the place Vision and meet a promising young scientist who was doing some interesting things with researching artificial life.  
“I need to see a girl about a robot.”

**Author's Note:**

> Credit to my friend Teej for coming up with the idea briefly referenced at the end about Vision and Shuri.  
> Also my working title for this was Tony and the Holograms...I changed it for obvious reasons


End file.
